The Middle East's security architecture is under severe strain as Yemen's Houthis — strengthened by years of Iranian support — press a sustained campaign of missiles and drones against Saudi Arabia while Iran exerts pressure from the other end of the Gulf.
Tehran has helped build the Houthis into a capable regional force, supplying weapons, technology and expertise. In July 2025, for example, Yemeni forces seized more than 750 tons of Iranian munitions and military hardware bound for the militant group including missiles, drone engines, radar systems and communications equipment.
The support has continued. Days before the Houthis declared a naval blockade against Saudi Arabia, Iran reportedly flew between 10 and 21 Revolutionary Guard commanders and military advisers into Yemen along with missile- and drone-related equipment. Despite its standoff with Washington, Tehran didn't shy away from bolstering the Houthis ability to threaten Riyadh from the Red Sea.
The Houthis have framed their campaign as retaliation for Saudi Arabia's military intervention in Yemen's civil war, which began in 2015 and included a prolonged air campaign and blockade. That history does not make their current attacks on Saudi infrastructure any less dangerous, but it helps explain why the Houthis present the escalation as a continuation of the Yemen war.
For decades, Saudi Arabia has had another way to move its oil if the Persian Gulf route through the Strait of Hormuz were ever disrupted. Its East-West pipeline carries crude across the country to Yanbu Port on the Red Sea, allowing Saudi oil to reach global markets bypassing the traditional maritime route. But that route is now vulnerable too. The Houthis have attacked Saudi-linked shipping and are advancing along Yemen's coast toward the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, another critical gateway for Saudi oil exports between Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula and Djibouti and Eritrea on the African coast.
Through the Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb straits, Iran and the Houthis are executing a dual-chokepoint strategy aimed at squeezing Saudi Arabia's oil revenues by making both routes less reliable and disrupting the movement of crude to global markets. At the same time, Iran's growing influence over these two critical waterways risks undermining the hard-won rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran as Houthi attacks could reignite a dormant yet deep-rooted feud.
And the Houthis have made clear that their military campaign is not indiscriminate. Senior Houthi official Mohamed al-Bukhaiti said that the group had assured Washington it would not target US vessels. The assurance came amid reported secret talks between Houthi leaders and US officials in Muscat where the group reaffirmed its commitment not to attack US shipping. Other reporting noted the Houthis had also offered guarantees regarding Israeli and other international commercial shipping while treating Saudi-linked ships as legitimate targets.
In effect, the Houthis have managed to keep America out of the conflict. Washington is attacking Tehran as an Iran-backed group targets one of its closest allies in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia — without giving the United States a direct reason to intervene.
The battlefield has since moved deeper into the kingdom. On September 19, Riyadh confirmed the Houthis had fired a ballistic missile toward the Saudi capital, their first such attempt in the latest campaign. The militant group claimed attacks on "sensitive" sites in Riyadh and an Aramco facility in Yanbu, indicating a deliberate Houthi intent to shift the conflict from borderlands to the political and economic heart of the kingdom.
Days earlier, drones launched from Iraq's Maysan province struck the East-West pipeline in the Riyadh and Medina areas. Satellite imagery showed smoke rising near Medina along the pipeline carrying Saudi crude to the Red Sea. With Hormuz closed, attacks by the Iran-aligned actors from Iraq and the Houthis threatening the Red Sea route at Bab el-Mandeb – this blueprint appears to erode Saudi Arabia’s strategic redundancy from multiple fronts.
Then came the most combustible incident. Saudi Arabia said its air defenses intercepted a Houthi drone before it entered restricted airspace over Makkah. The Houthis denied targeting the holy city, saying their targets were Saudi oil facilities and military bases. Houthis’ denial aside, the episode raised an alarm over how quickly the conflict could transcend a conventional security threat to Saudi Arabia and stir pan-Islamic concerns, potentially deepening the sectarian fault line running through the region.
The longstanding animosity, coupled with America's reluctance to protect Saudi Arabia, has pushed Riyadh to widen its security partnerships. The Makkah Joint Defense Agreement builds on the Saudi-Pakistan defense pact signed a year earlier, bringing Türkiye into the fold. The new treaty boasts a major energy producer, a nuclear-armed state and a NATO member with three leading Muslim states institutionalizing their cooperation within the framework of collective defense.
While Islamabad has extended an “unconditional” commitment to the kingdom’s security, Ankara has expressed willingness to meet Riyadh’s military needs, especially on “technical issues.” Although a collective defense pact, its significance is political as much as military. Both Pakistan and Türkiye maintain close ties with Tehran as well as Riyadh, giving them channels to press Iran to use its influence in pushing the Houthis back to the negotiating table.
That diplomatic role is already taking shape. By September 22, Egypt joined Pakistan and Türkiye to reaffirm Saudi Arabia's right to defend itself, stressing dialogue and diplomacy. The concern had by then gone international as G7 foreign ministers declared that the situation in Yemen represented an "unacceptable threat" to regional stability and global energy security. They condemned Houthi strikes on Saudi Arabia and called on Iran to end its arming and support for the group, citing violations of the UN Security Council resolutions.
The Houthis are neither an Iranian creation nor an actor with no connection to Tehran. They have their own ideology and interests, but years of Iranian backing have given them the means to threaten Saudi Arabia. Every missile and drone the Houthis fire — at Riyadh or against domestic rivals — doubles as a live combat test of Iran’s military technology and sustains Tehran's proxy war against Saudi Arabia as it fights its own war with the United States.
*My article (unedited) first appeared at Middle East Online